Sunday, February 28, 2010

Back in Black

Understanding that black body absorption and radiation works much better than any other "color" in the spectrum, I picked up a quart of flat black paint at Ace Hardware last weekend. Applied with an old, cheap, Chinese brush this week to my solar pool heater, I "covered up" all the residual white glue remnants that stuck to the black poly coiled heat exchanger tubes, and painted the exposed treated plywood platform with about a pint, so it'll soak up as much Arizona sun as possible, and get as hot as possible.

It seems to have worked, because the striped tailed lizards - who began to appear 2 weeks ago - kept checking out the heater this weekend when it was sunny, enjoying as much adjacent heat as their cold blooded reptilian forms needed to be adequately spry and mobile in my backyard.By 'subjective qualitative feel' the discharge water "seems" to be about 3 to 5 degrees F hotter than it was the week before painting. The dern pool is still between 62 and 65F - too chilly for swimming, even for this Lake Michigan veteran. But the heater discharge is in the upper 70s. Given enough time, it'll get warmer - day by day. Hopefully, by Easter (April 4th) the pool will be warm enough that swimming energetic laps will be possible! Il faut voir - parkalam!

So as we wait, day by day, BTU by BTU, it would be nice to have some good music to listen to... and ever since I started painting last Monday afternoon, this song has been running through my head, so I feel obliged to put up this Youtube link to one of my favorite Australian Bands: (yeah, their drummer is not that great, but it is fun music)

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Create your own visitor map!Gray Background tones, because despite many peoples' view that Everything in the world is simply Black or White, (all fundamentalists, many engineers, few scientists, lots of confused persons, many digital thinkers) there's all sorts of shades of gray, everywhere you look. Good wine doesn't have to be expensive. Conservatives do not have to be selfish and insane wing-nuts. Liberals do not have to have socialist-abortion-producing-crystal-worshiping-gay-marriages. Racists, xenophobes, fundamentalists, and willful ignorance suck. The Earth is Much Older than 6000 years. Don't be afraid of Science, embrace it. The web's a great tool. ..in the humble perspective of this INTJ alpha male.